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Lee Jones's BlogSat, 24 Mar 2018 17:43:22 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3Review of Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s “A Kingdom in Crisis”http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=1059
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=1059#commentsTue, 21 Oct 2014 13:48:16 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=1059The following is my review of Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s new book, A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, just out from Zed Books. It will appear some time in early November on New Mandala.

UPDATE: 31.10.14 – following comments from the author, I’ve added a long addendum to address his points. See below.

Andrew MacGregor Marshall’s A Kingdom in Crisis has been eagerly and long awaited by many Thailand watchers. Having resigned from a senior Reuters post in 2011 to publish a series of articles on Thailand’s political crisis based on leaked US diplomatic documents, “AMM” has become a vociferous critic of Thai elites and especially the monarchy, developing a wide following on social media. A Kingdom in Crisis was anticipated as the definitive statement of AMM’s most controversial thesis: that “an unacknowledged conflict over royal succession is at the heart of Thailand’s twenty-first political crisis” (page 3). However, despite its many merits, the book does not quite clinch this argument.

A Kingdom in Crisis is a bold, uncompromising and highly critical survey of Thailand’s ongoing political crisis. The focus, however, is squarely on the monarchy, rather than on its place within Thailand’s broader polity and political economy. The first nine chapters all relate to the period before 2000, delving into ancient history to underscore the brutality of the absolutist monarchy and the normality of power struggles over the succession. Only three chapters then deal with the current conjuncture and make AMM’s central argument. The background is, of course, interesting and useful, and although it may contain little new for Thailand specialists, to collate the truly damning history of the Thai monarchy in an accessible manner is a worthy endeavour. This is particularly true given that even mere academic commentary on the monarchy’s ancient history risks prosecution and hefty jail sentences under Thailand’s deeply obnoxious lèse majesté laws.

However, there are serious drawbacks to this focus. First, it means that A Kingdom in Crisis is not a truly comprehensive overview of Thailand’s present crisis for the uninitiated. Missing, for instance, is any serious consideration of Thailand’s socio-economic transformation under rapid capitalist development. This transformation has radically changed the orientation and aspirations of Thailand’s lower orders and generated new elite fractions in emerging economic sectors such as telecommunications – the origin of Thaksin Shinawatra himself. It also created the opening – via the Asian financial crisis – for Thaksin’s rise. Although AMM actually concedes that the “more significant historic struggle” is that of “Thailand’s people to free themselves from domination and exploitation by the ruling class” (page 4), this concern swiftly recedes entirely into the background. And because he maintains that “at the elite level, Thailand’s conflict is essentially a [royal] succession struggle” (page 3), all the political specificity of the last 13 years – everything that Thaksin did, and all the reasons why yellow-shirts hate him so passionately – is airbrushed. Indeed, it seems one must do this in order to sustain the argument that the succession is really what the conflict is all about.

This argument is basically advanced in three steps. First, the lengthy historical backdrop implicitly seeks to convince the reader that succession struggles, driven by inter-elite competition for power, are a normal part of Thai history (Chapters 7-8). Thailand’s modern monarchs are not seen as personally powerful, but as symbolic figureheads installed and manipulated by genuinely powerful elite factions – an argument already (and compellingly) advanced by Giles Ji Ungpakorn. Second, Thai elites have expressed growing concern about Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn’s suitability to succeed King Bhumibol since the 1980s, owing to his womanising, financial profligacy and diplomatic unreliability (Chapter 9). Third, this concern has been exacerbated by Thaksin’s rise and lies behind the conflicts of the last ten years (Chapters 10-12). Essentially, steps one and two are fairly unobjectionable, though the implication that past practices will always repeat themselves is symptomatic of the short shrift given to historical specificity. It is the crucial third step that is more dubious.

The core of AMM’s thesis is that royalist elites fear that, unlike the “generally pliable Bhumibol”, Vajiralongkorn is “volatile and belligerent” (page 137). Having allegedly thwarted his succession in the 1980s and 1990sthey are now said to fear that if he took the throne, “he would seek revenge”, “removing royal patronage from the grandees of the traditional establishment and promoting a new elite” – presumably one aligned with Thaksin – through his control of the lucrative Crown Property Bureau (pages151-2). However, no proof is ever presented for this central claim, which is an extremely strong one. The argument is not merely that Thaksin would manipulate the new king to entrench his political and economic power, but that Vajiralongkorn himself would be an active and independently powerful political player and wreak havoc on the Thai hierarchy. This is a significant departure from Ji Ungpakorn’s interpretation and arguably from AMM’s own acceptance that the monarchy has historically been a controllable tool of powerful elite factions.

Certainly, it does seem that many royalists have been sceptical of Vajiralongkorn’s capacity to elicit popular and elite loyalties since the late 1980s (page 141). But AMM’s repeated claims that the elite has consequently tried to “sabotage” Vajiralongkorn’s succession are not accompanied by any evidence (for example, pages 141-143, 172-3, 175, 214-217). For instance, an unreferenced claim that the king would retire sometime after turning 60 in 1988, plus one public statement by an aristocrat worrying about the crown prince’s capacity to match up to his father, is used to claim that ‘The ruling class had succeeded in keeping Vajiralongkorn off the throne’ (pages 140-141). Perhaps they did. Perhaps AMM has solid, but confidential, sources that have confirmed the scheming – but that is not clear. We are essentially asked to take these claims on trust.

More problematically, perhaps, when evidence is presented for the succession being “the heart” of Thailand’s present crisis – largely from 39 Wikileaks cables – it is also contestable. Because no one ever goes on record saying that he or she wants to prevent the crown prince from taking the throne, AMM’s basic argumentative strategy is to tack Vajiralongkorn onto any statement of concern about Thaksin. For example, in 2007, he writes that the elite

feared [that] Thaksin and the crown prince would seek vengeance for the establishment’s efforts to undermine them. A worried senior general told [US Ambassador] Boyce in April 2007 that he “could not rule out the deposed PM returning and wreaking havoc on the country…” (page 169)

Note that this is a concern about Thaksin; the general does not even mention Vajiralongkorn. Similarly, a claim that General Prem Tinsulanond’s circle was seeking to “ruin [Vajiralongkorn’s] chances of becoming king” (page 170) is only backed by a US cable reporting that palace elites were trying to undermine his consort. When elites’ private remarks betray no evidence of a conspiracy against Vajiralongkorn, AMM simply says that they are lying and selectively quotes their more negative sentiments about the crown prince (page 188).

Since the original documents are all online, readers can judge AMM’s interpretations for themselves. In the cable just mentioned, General Prem “cautioned that Thaksin ran the risk of self-delusion if he thought that the Crown Prince would act as his friend/supporter in the future merely because of Thaksin’s monetary support”. This does not seem to express fear of a Vajiralongkorn-Thaksin condominium. Former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun states that he “had always believed that the Crown Prince would succeed his father”, and Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsila had identical expectations. Anand lamely notes that while Vajiralongkorn is not ideal, and “someone should raise the matter with the king… there was really no one who could raise such a delicate topic” – hardly suggestive of an active plot. The point is not necessarily that AMM is wrong – merely that these cables can be read in different ways, and there is no really firm evidence presented, let alone a “smoking gun” that definitively proves his thesis.

Fundamentally at stake here is the basic explanation of the last ten years of Thai history. Was an extant concern with the royal succession merely “catalys[ed]” by Thaksin’s rise (page 155)? Would it have caused political conflict whenever Bhumibol died? Or is the concern of the Yellow Shirt faction primarily with Thaksin’s mobilisation of the masses into Thai politics and his growing monopolisation of political and economic power? From the latter perspective, the king’s looming death is problematic not because traditional elites fear radical personal retribution from Vajiralongkorn as a powerful individual, but because, as Thaksin increasingly colonised the state apparatus, they came to fear losing direct control of yet another institution – an extremely important one – that they had long manipulated for their benefit. Crucially, this concern would have been minimal in the absence of the political movement headed by Thaksin. He was, as AMM notes, seeking to “flush out the ghosts” (page 219), to thrust aside rival networks and colonise the state apparatus with his own cronies. Elites have always done this. What made Thaksin uniquely dangerous was his colossal popular support and unprecedented parliamentary majorities. Power no longer alternated among rival factions, with venal elites horse-trading in parliamentary coalitions to carve up the spoils of office between them. Thaksin’s faction appeared to have found a winning formula for permanent control of state power. Unable to defeat him at the polls, anti-Thaksin elites were forced to rely upon institutions that they manipulated or controlled: the courts, the election commission, the army and, of course, the monarchy – both to whip up the Yellow Shirt protests and to legitimise judicial and military coups. In other words, it is Thailand’s violent and bitter social conflict that has lent such importance to the succession, not the other way around.

This perspective explains why, even in private discussions, anti-Thaksin elites are primarily concerned not with Vajiralongkorn, but with Thaksin. It also explains why their primary efforts have not been directed at altering the succession – despite having an opportunity to do so under the 2006-2007 military regime when, as AMM notes, Prem indirectly controlled the state, yet mysteriously made no “arrangements with Bhumibol to keep Vajiralongkorn off the throne” (page 167). Instead, they have overwhelmingly concentrated on rigging the Thai constitution and state apparatus to prevent Thaksin-aligned parties from regaining their popular majorities. That is, after all, the clear goal of the current military regime. If the elite clustered around the palace are really so fearful of Vajiralongkorn, why, since they have twice been able to use the king to endorse their armed seizure of power, do they not also use him to install their allegedly preferred heir, Princess Sirindhorn, at least as regent? According to AMM, precedents and legal procedures enable a female succession, and Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit are now physically and mentally incapacitated (page 199) – so they could not resist. The only reasons can be that these elites are not sufficiently concerned or that they fear a split within the security forces, since several army units are technically commanded by Vajiralongkorn. Even if the latter were true – and I have seen no compelling evidence for it – it would again be a case of potential social conflict – a possible civil war –shaping the succession crisis, not vice versa.

So is the monarchy an important element in Thailand’s political crisis? Undoubtedly, and we are indebted to Andrew MacGregor Marshall for revealing the sordid soap opera of the succession. But is the succession really “the heart” of Thailand’s crisis? I, for one, remain to be convinced.

————–

Addendum

Following the circulation of the review on Twitter, Andrew MacGregor Marshall has responded; in the spirit of open debate I thought it worth replying in detail.

Andrew writes that he and I “agree on much more than we disagree on”, but nonetheless suggests that I “misunderstood the book — I’ve never said Thai crisis is ‘really about succession’… The key point is that succession is a crucial factor usually left out of most analysis… royal succession is just one element of Thailand’s crisis”. He continues: “Maybe you should read the book again… including the chapters on Thai democracy which you dismissed as irrelevant”.

Andrew is right that we agree far more than we disagree. In fact, the review probably doesn’t give him sufficient credit for getting so much right about Thailand, including the monarchy’s grisly and undemocratic history, the oligarchic and contingent nature of Thai democracy, and the fundamentally powerless nature of the monarch. I don’t think I “dismissed” this material, certainly not as “irrelevant”. It is just that, having learned about Thailand through radical scholars like Benedict Anderson, Kevin Hewison, Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Chris Baker, Pasuk Phongpaichit, and so on, his treatment was not new for me. I fully accept that, to many Thais, this material is explosive and, as I said in the review, he has performed a real service by collating this history in a highly readable format.

Obviously, I have focused my review on where we disagree, which is a fairly narrow point over the precise weight to accord the royal succession in analysing Thailand’s crisis. Again, perhaps I have not paid enough tribute to Andrew here; it is partly a testament to the work he did in 2011 that the succession is generally accepted (by serious students of Thai politics) to be “one element of Thailand’s crisis”, notwithstanding what he says on Twitter and in the book’s opening pages. Had A Kingdom in Crisis appeared in 2011 or 2012, that would probably not have been true (yet). At issue still, as I suggest in the review, is how we understand that “one element” in relation to the rest.

So, have I “misunderstood” the book’s argument? Per the author’s request, I went back through it again and present what I take to be key quotations that identify his core argument in a nutshell. Excuse the length, but I want to be fair.

“An unacknowledged conflict over the royal succession is at the heart of Thailand’s twenty-first century political crisis.” (p.3)

“At the elite level, Thailand’s conflict is essentially a succession struggle over who will become monarch when King Bhumibol dies. In particular, most of Thailand’s elite are implacably opposed to the prospect of Vajiralongkorn succeeding his father, and are prepared to go to extreme lengths to sabotage the succession… The long feared end-reign conflict has been in full swing since 2005.” (p.3)

“The story… is by no means about succession alone. The broader narrative is another, more significant struggle by Thailand’s people to free themselves from domination and exploitation by the ruling class… Both conflicts pivot on the same issue – the power and privilege of the palace and the elite.” (p.4)

“The unacknowledged conflict over the royal succession is far less significant than the struggle for democracy and equal rights… but investigating and exposing it is essential to provide a full understanding of the kingdom’s crisis.” (p.8)

“Throughout… Thai history, the royal succession has nearly always been violently contested and the rules have almost invariably been broken. Contemporary Thailand is no different. A bitter battle over royal succession is at the heart of the country’s turmoil.” (p.109)

“The ruling class believed that if the crown prince became Rama X, he would seek revenge for their failure to respect him and their efforts to sabotage his succession prospects [in the 1980s], removing royal patronage from the grandees of the traditional establishment and promoting a new elite in their place.” (pp.151-2)

“The catalyst for Thailand’s succession struggles to erupt into crisis was the political rise of Thaksin Shinawatra…” (p.155) “Thaksin’s apparent alliance with the prince made it less implausible that Vajiralongkorn could become king… Together, they could make a formidable team, perhaps able to dominate Thailand for decades… [this fear] created the extraordinary climate of apocalyptic dread among the elite from 2005… What united them was not simply dislike of Thaksin, it was fear of Vajiralongkorn. From the start, the royal succession was central to their motivations.” (p.159)

Like the 2006 coup, the 2008 yellow shirt insurgency is said to be “motivated by a determination to put parliament forever beyond Thaksin’s control and ensure Vajiralongkorn could be prevented from becoming king.” (p.175)

“The establishment’s desperate efforts to prevent Vajiralongkorn becoming King Rama X have dominated elite-level politics since 2005. The prospect of Thaksin and the crown prince using the… Crown Property Bureau to transform Thailand and elevate a new ruling class at the expense of the old terrifies the oligarchy… Bhumibol was a pliant and mostly powerless monarch who tended to do what he was told. Vajiralongkorn, in alliance with Thaksin, would be a very different prospect. The old elite would no longer be able to use insider palace deals and royal patronage to maintain – and sanctify – their dominance. Not only would they lose access to the economic advantages conferred by the favouritism of the CPB, but they would no longer be able to draw on the social status and political influence that derive from perceived closeness to the palace. Thaksin, if he succeeds in playing kingmaker for Vajiralongkorn, hopes to be richly rewarded. He is as obsessed by royal succession as his opponents… The elite war of succession will rage until Bhumibol dies. There is no prospect of any deal or accommodation… because neither side can trust the other to keep its promises when the succession happens.” (pp.211-2)

Readers will note that pp. 4 and 8 make reference to another dimension of the Thai crisis, the popular struggle for equality, and so the succession is indeed explicitly identified as just one element – in fact, a subordinate one – in that crisis. The review notes both this, and the fact that this is never explored in the book, making it an inherently limited treatment of the situation. Indeed, on p.8, Andrew himself notes the incongruity of the resultant focus on intra-elite politics within Zed Books’ “Asian Arguments” series, which typically takes a “bottom up” perspective. But given this focus, I didn’t think it inappropriate to focus on the succession argument, which is after all the book’s main thesis, as many quotations above evidence. Andrew is right that he never says the “Thai crisis is ‘really about succession'”, whereas I use a similar term in my review. But he does clearly say (repeatedly) that the succession is “at the heartof” the crisis and that, at the elite level, the “conflict is essentially a succession struggle”. I think “really” is a fair synonym.

Sharp-eyed readers will note the large gaps between the quotations on p.8 and p.109, and p.109 and p.155. This is not an oversight on my part but reflects the argumentative strategy of the book, to which my review refers. After presenting his main thesis in the introduction, chapters 2-9 then deal with the back story of the monarchy and its dubious role in the evolution of Thai democracy. It is only chapter 10 that starts dealing with the contemporary crisis.

Why does a book subtitled Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century devote over half of its bulk to pre-21st century matters? In my view, in addition to proving that the monarchy has never been a real force for democracy (again, a worthwhile goal in and of itself), this material is intended to prime the reader to accept the core claim on p.109: the succession has always been contested; ergo, the succession is being contested today, and this is central to the contemporary crisis. This approach may well be intended to compensate for the limitations of the evidence linking the current crisis directly to the succession, which my review discusses at length.

As the review also notes, this argumentative strategy rests on a cyclical notion of history. This is explicitly expressed on p.213 when Andrew states: “The same forces that drove the rise and decline of Southeast Asian kingdoms throughout the past millennium are at work in twenty-first century Thailand.” And on p.149: “The ruling class had grown and its composition had changed over the centuries, but the old sakdina culture and patronage and corruption had never been swept away, just overlaid by institutional and capitalist relationships that masked the persistence of older forms of power.”

As my review hints at early on, I simply disagree with this. The forces at play today are historically specific and unprecedented. It is not just a medieval system overlaid with mystifying institutional formats, such that every succession will necessarily elicit serious political unrest, as is apparently implied here. Thailand is dominated by specific socio-political forces that have been transformed or produced wholesale by rapid capitalist development, and they use thoroughly modern forms of power to seize and maintain control of the state, including the manipulation of conservative, royalist and religious ideology, as well as elections, the judiciary, military interventions, and so on.

I accept that Andrew’s apparent view is pretty widespread – that Thailand is still basically run by an amaart, a sort of shadowy, palace-networked quasi-aristocracy, a feudal inheritance from Thailand’s days as a “bureaucratic polity”, as Fred Riggs put it (and to which some say Thailand is now returning). This has echoes of Arno Meyer’s ancien regime thesis about World War I, which he claimed was caused by the persistence of vestigial feudal elements within ostensibly liberal, democratic and capitalist states in Europe. I think it is flawed for the same reasons: it does not give enough weight to the way class and other forces are transformed by capitalist development or the emergence of modern forms of state and regime.

Take the military, for example. On the one hand, its corporate insulation from genuine civilian supremacy, while certainly not unique to Thailand or monarchies in general, is arguably aided, in part, by the king’s formal position as head of the armed forces, rather than an elected leader. Yet, the military’s perks and privileges do not, as in previous centuries, flow exclusively or even significantly from the palace or the Crown Property Bureau. Rather, military officers in both their public and private capacities have become engaged in all sorts of modern, capitalist business enterprises. One only has to consider the careers of former Prime Ministers like Chatichai Choonhavan or Chavalit Yongchaiyudh to see the significance of this. This is crucial for understanding the interests of different military factions. Many Thai generals – of whom there are a staggering 1,750 – are fat, lazy businessmen, who simply want to be left alone to sip cocktails at the Army Club and get on with milking their lucrative business concessions. They do not want to fight wars; still less are they interested in governing the country. And, when they try, they are very bad at it. Their fortunes do not necessarily rise and fall depending on the individual on the throne. They are not necessarily personally afraid of Vajiralongkorn. Their interests can be served in different ways. This complexity is required to explain, for instance, why some army factions have occasionally seemed to favour Thaksin.

All of this is a long way round of stating my core position: that an analysis of Thailand’s crisis (or any political situation) should start with an analysis of the historically specific, concrete social forces contesting state power in a given locale, with an understanding that their composition, orientation and power relations are strongly shaped by their relation to the political economy context. (This is the fundamental premise of the Murdoch School of critical political economy, in which I situate myself.) From there, we can see why particular institutions appear to be a significant focus of political struggle, and also explain how and why they are used in the way they are. It is not because of something inherent to the institutions themselves, but because real political agents (actual people) are struggling to use them for particular political ends. I have tried to apply this approach in my own brief commentary on Thailand.

From this perspective, as I say in the review, “it is Thailand’s violent and bitter social conflict that has lent such importance to the succession, not the other way around.” In a personal email, Andrew says he agrees with this, which is why he says on Twitter that I “misunderstood” the book. I do not think the book quite gives that impression. True, he adopts Ungpakorn’s argument that the monarch is personally weak, and elites prefer a pliant monarchy that they can manipulate (though he also muddies this somewhat by adopting Duncan McCargo’s “network monarchy” metaphor, which seems to accord greater power or agency to the palace). However, Andrew’s argumentative strategy is the opposite of that which I just suggested. He starts with the institution, the monarchy, beginning in ancient times, and traces the sordid story of the succession through to the present day. His logic is: the institution is important, therefore it will always be contested, therefore the succession is at the heart of today’s crisis (see p.109).

My suggestion is: the institution has variable symbolic value and its importance is proportional to the degree of social strife. As Andrew notes, the monarchy was very unpopular around the 1932 constitutional revolution and a republic was even considered; then, during the Cold War, a personality cult was deliberately established around Bhumibol; the next heir is less popular – hence, the monarchy’s symbolic value is variable, not fixed. It has certainly become important to specific social forces – certain fractions of capital, army factions, bureaucratic and judicial elites and the upper and upper-middle classes – as a means to legitimise their undemocratic seizures of power in an era of mass democracy. Accordingly, any diminution in the institution’s ideological influence could be a cause for concern. However, it is only a serious cause for concern when these forces face a significant challenge to their access to state power and resources. That only occurred following the ascent of Thaksin Shinawatra. So, it is not that there was a pre-existing hatred and fear of Vajiralongkorn, which was then “catalysed” by Thaksin’s rise, as Andrew suggests. It is Thaksin’s rise that produces anxiety over loss of control over the monarchical institution.

This may seem like hair-splitting, and Andrew may even say he agrees with all of this. Perhaps so – and perhaps all of the foregoing simply reflects someone “bending the stick” too far in the opposite direction in order to make a provocative argument against conventional wisdom, leading to the argument being inadvertently overstated or improperly contextualised. I know I have often been accused of this! But I think my perspective, rigorously adhered to, leads to different understandings and expectations to those advanced in A Kingdom in Crisis. For Andrew, Vajiralongkorn and the traditional elite personally despise and fear one another, and so the contemporary conflict can only end with the victory of one or the other. Conversely, I believe that had Thaksin not built his election-winning, multi-class coalition, the succession would be a relatively small concern. The traditional elite would be able to stomach Vajiralongkorn as Rama X, so long as there was no other powerful faction around to wrest control over him (and the institution) away from them. Accordingly, if a way can be found to terminate the Thaksin faction’s electoral juggernaut, the succession’s importance also recedes. Even if the elite wanted to swap Vajiralongkorn for Sirindhorn, it would be accomplished with little fuss, and certainly without anything like the last decade’s political upheaval, unless some powerful group resisted. The trouble is precisely that Thaksin’s coalition simply refuses to go away. That is the heart of Thailand’s twenty-first century crisis.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=10598The Ruling Elite of Singaporehttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=993
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=993#respondMon, 05 May 2014 13:00:44 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=993My review of Michael D. Barr’s The Ruling Elite of Singapore has been published in ASEASUK News no. 55 (spring 2014), 17-19. You will shortly be able to read the review here. In the meantime, here it is:

Although work on Singapore’s political economy and political system is fairly extensive, the narrower question of how its ruling elite was created and operates in practice has largely been neglected – until now. The Ruling Elite is a useful and thoroughly researched account of elite formation and maintenance in the city-state since the 1960s. It provides ample empirical evidence of the deliberate, elitist and racist strategy pursued by Lee Kuan Yew and others to build a self-reproducing elite in their own image. The book clearly demonstrates how rulers smoothed the ascendancy of hand-picked individuals – overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese –thoroughly debunking the myth that Singapore is a meritocratic society where ethnic groups enjoy equal opportunities. It is likely to become a standard reference point for scholarship on Singapore, though its wider applicability is limited.

Barr’s main thesis is that Singapore’s ruling elite is the product of a deliberate strategy pursued by Lee Kuan Yew, based on Lee’s peculiar reading of Toynbee. Confronting a situation in the 1950s where ‘quality’ elites numbered fewer than 150, Lee set out to forge a new socio-political class capable of governing the city-state in perpetuity. Barr argues that elite formation was driven by education, in elite schools and via government scholarships; socialisation, particularly into selective norms of ‘Chineseness’; the assumption of a dominant economic role by the state; and patronage, particularly directed by the Lee family. Sketching Singapore’s networks of power, Barr argues that the Lees now sit entrenched at the centre, running the city-state like a ‘family business’. In the inner core are key ministers and People’s Action Party (PAP) leaders, senior bureaucrats in ministries, quasi-state entities and statutory boards, military officers, the chairs and CEOs of key Government-Linked Companies (GLCs), the Government Investment Corporation, Singapore Press Holdings and MediaCorp, and the three major Chinese banks, particularly OCBC and UOB. There is then a ‘subordinate elite’ which mainly implements the inner core’s policies while keeping social groups in line: the National Trades Union Congress, and various corporatist social and religious bodies. The interlocking memberships and revolving doors between these institutions keep the elite remarkably autonomous, coherent and consistent in its worldview, making any serious external challenge practically doomed to failure, Barr argues.

Overall the book provides solid evidence for how the elite has grown and consolidated into an unrivalled system of rule. This is a difficult topic to research, and Barr has undertaken some excellent detective work. To demonstrate that the system really does ‘work’ as many suspect, he pieces together fragments of publically available evidence to illustrate, for example, that the sudden government decision in 2004 to relax language qualifications for government scholarships was driven by Lee Kuan Yew’s grandchildren being poor at Mandarin (p.91). The book contains some intriguing insights on the rising preponderance of elites with a military background, and some very reasonable (albeit very pessimistic) prognostications about Singapore’s future without Lee Kuan Yew.

Nonetheless, there are some real problems with the book. The most obvious is Barr’s choice to present his material chronologically, portraying the rise and consolidation of Lee’s project and the ‘changing of the guard’ to a younger generation. Although this central narrative is framed by some short, more analytical chapters, these do little more than summarise the intervening material, leading to substantial repetition. An analytical explanation for how such a coherent elite could be forged is never coherently presented. Indeed, the book is utterly atheoretical; there is not even a definition (let alone discussion) of ‘elitism’ as a social phenomena, and nowhere are the key explanatory drivers of Singapore’s elite formation ever set out clearly in one place. Instead, brief explanatory points are dispersed throughout the text. Thus, for instance, the crucial rise of the GLCs – which provided an ‘almost inescapable vehicle of elite patronage and power’ – is discussed in just one paragraph mid-way through a chapter on the 1980s (pp.58-9). Particularly since this – along with Singapore’s small size – are cited as the explanation for Lee’s success, this is grossly insufficient. To get any explanatory traction, the reader themselves must glean Barr’s narrative for such morsels. A natural and very unfortunate consequence is that the book’s immediate value to those studying elites in other countries is very limited. Barr dismisses early work that interpreted Singapore through a ‘core executive’ model drawn from political science, but at least this approach tried to draw out factors potentially common to multiple societies. By contrast, this book’s narrative style often lends the text an episodic, journalistic, even gossipy flavour as Barr relates yet another micro-story of elite manoeuvring. The text is laden with footnotes (36pp of notes for a 140pp book), but the notes are often concerned to prove that some particular individual was behind a specific decision or shenanigan. In doing his detective work, Barr has arguably pressed his nose too far against the window.

A second and partly related set of criticisms relate to the specifics of Barr’s argument. The failure to really explain how rival elites could apparently be so easily crushed or co-opted into the PAP-centred one is particularly problematic when it comes to the business community. Barr points out that the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (CCC) was initially a powerful and autonomous body. Nonetheless, the CCC was – somehow – persuaded to fund the creation of GLCs that then out-competed them, then ‘marginalised’ in the 1960s (pp.33-4). Why would they accept this? Barr does not say. A more analytical account (say, one provided by Garry Rodan) might point to the political weakness of the bourgeoisie – its inability to organise its own political front – and the Cold War context, which led a fearful business elite to side with anyone capable of destroying the left. Furthermore, despite the CCC’s alleged ‘marginalisation’, two major Chinese banks (one of them the driving force behind the CCC) are subsequently described as retaining ‘autonomy’ and being the ‘only viable alternative power base for any alternative elite’ (p.37). Barr notes that the banks and government regularly exchange personnel, making it questionable whether ‘OCBC people who have been in government… are OCBC people in government, or PAP people in the OCBC’ (p.37). This is an intriguing question, raising the issue of the fusion of state and business power in Singapore; it would suggest that the elite is not as ‘autonomous’ as often supposed but is in fact tied to large-scale capital (mostly state and international, but also local). This would explain why the bourgeoisie has tolerated the PAP’s ascent, and why trade unions have been so thoroughly neutralised while some big businesses retain apparent ‘autonomy’.

A descriptive account of ‘elitism’ cannot get at these issues in a way that, for example, a Marxist account of the Singaporean state could, not least because it neglects societal dynamics almost entirely. The ballot box occasionally intrudes into Barr’s smooth account of elite consolidation, but there is no account of why voters have increasingly moved against the PAP since the late 1980s, why Lee Hsieng Loong has shifted to a quasi-liberalising reform agenda, why this does not seem to be working, and so on. There is no account of rising popular concern with the cost of living or mass immigration – a by-product of the PAP’s development strategy – and how this is feeding into rising opposition support. Nor is there any mention of the emergence of an evangelical Christian segment of the elite, whose activities have been highly divisive. The dialectical relationship between social forces and ruling elites, and the contradictions between elite strategy and elite sustainability, are entirely neglected. The elite is simply the brainchild of Lee Kuan Yew, and Lee ‘answered to no one’ (p.65). That Barr makes this claim is particularly ironic because he highlights that the idea of Lee as Singapore’s ‘national father’ was a myth deliberately fostered in the 1990s. He quotes approvingly from other authors’ criticisms of a rash of books that ‘give the wrong impression that Lee built up Singapore almost single-handedly’ (p.88). Yet on p.130, Barr himself suggests that Lee ‘almost single-handedly turned the Singapore political system into his domain’ (p.130). Barr thus ends up reinforcing the same myth he criticises.

In reality, no one does anything single-handedly. Social phenomena demand social explanations. But the focus on a handcrafted elite system provides few explanatory resources to account for how that system was enabled to flourish, or the dynamics that cause it to transform.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=99307th review of ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asiahttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=983
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=983#respondThu, 03 Apr 2014 08:42:12 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=983The book continues to be favourably reviewed. The latest review comes from Kai Chen of Zhejiang University in China:

ASEAN, Sovereignty, and Intervention in Southeast Asia develops its own alternative perspective of sovereignty, interference, and noninterference in ASEAN, and disproves the stereotype that ASEAN has been “socialized into a norm of non-interference”. Academics, researchers, and students of international relations (especially those interested in sovereignty and noninterference) as well as readers concerned about ASEAN and Southeast Asia studies will benefit from this well-researched book.

(Journal of East Asian Studies, 14:1 (2014), 137-139)

I’ve uploaded the PDF of the review here, since it’s not easy to access.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=9830Sixth review of ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asiahttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=977
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=977#respondFri, 07 Mar 2014 09:58:24 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=977I stumbled across another review of my book, this time in Millennium. The reviewer calls it a

challenging book… pioneers a new approach to the understanding of regional politics in Southeast Asia… Jones bravely investigates what sovereignty really means in Southeast Asia today.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=9770Fifth review of ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asiahttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=805
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=805#respondSun, 08 Sep 2013 14:15:06 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=805Another review of my book has been published, this one by veteran Southeast Asianist Ramses Amer of Sweden’s Institute for Security and Development Policy. Writing in the Austrian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, he calls the book

an interesting contribution… the book addresses a highly relevant area of research from both scholarly and policy perspectives… Through its approach and originality, it complements existing literature by offering new insights. The book can be recommended to the scholarly community and policy makers. It is of considerable relevance to those interested in the Southeast Asian region… regionalism and regional collaboration more broadly, given that issues such as sovereignty and intervention… are of global relevance.

He does suggest that I might have set ASEAN’s non-interference principle within the context of international law and the UN Charter, which is fair enough, although the thrust of my argument is that norms have to be understood politically, not legalistically.

There is a rather stranger criticism in Ramses’ claim that the two Cold War case studies (East Timor and Cambodia) ‘do not offer any strong evidence to inquire into the practical implementation of ASEAN’s principles’, because Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor ‘was viewed as an internal Indonesian issue by ASEAN’, while ‘Cambodia was not a member of ASEAN’ and ‘the Association would argue that its policies were in response to Vietnam’s military intervention in Cambodia’.

These claims are odd since they are anticipated and refuted in the book. A central part of the argument about East Timor is that ASEAN selectively chose to identify it as an ‘internal’ affair, in order to use the ‘non-interference’ principle to protect Indonesia whilst it brutally annexed a state that had declared itself independent and sovereign. That ASEAN ‘viewed’ it as internal is not neutral or incidental but a political choice – and one rejected by virtually every other third-world state at the time (pp. 71-73). This selectivity is precisely underscored by its diametrically opposite reaction to the Vietnamese intervention to overthrow Pol Pot, where it screamed ‘intervention!’ to high heaven and fomented civil war for a decade. I quote a Thai diplomat who observes: ‘What happened in East Timor was exactly the same thing, in principle, as what the Vietnamese did to Cambodia: a foreign invaded, occupied Cambodia; a foreign-invaded, occupied East Timor’ (p. 75). But whereas ASEAN ‘looked the other way’ on East Timor (and in fact assisted Indonesia), it did everything it could short of directly confronting Vietnam militarily to overturn the post-Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. What ‘the Association would argue’ is neither here nor there – the literature is full of judgements echoing elite self-justification, as the book demonstrates.These rarely make sense in their own terms, anyway – for instance, if it matters that ‘Cambodia was not a member of ASEAN’, why is ASEAN’s reaction so universally explained as a defence of ASEAN’s non-interference principle, which would not presumably apply to non-members? What actually matters here is the self-evident hypocrisy of ASEAN governments, their very uneven application of sovereignty norms, and how we explain it. That is what the book sets out to do.

A]n interesting contribution… the book addresses a highly relevant area of research from both scholarly and policy perspectives… Through its approach and originality, it complements existing literature by offering new insights. The book can be recommended to the scholarly community and policy makers. It is of considerable relevance to those interested in the Southeast Asian region… regionalism and regional collaboration more broadly, given that issues such as sovereignty and intervention… are of global relevance.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=8050New Review of ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asiahttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=777
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=777#respondWed, 12 Jun 2013 08:24:48 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=777A couple of friends have pointed out a review of my book which I’d not seen before, by history professor Christopher Gennari, inEast Asian Integration Studies. It’s a positive review with a pithy edge to it:

Jones’ work is an important and significant contribution to academic literature… Jones clearly places himself against the current of the typical historiography… This is not some drool account of vapid diplomacy; this work is a forthright presentation of ideas and positions. And, for its part, it loves pointing out hypocrisy.

It’s also a bit strange, though, when it comes to criticise the book’s alleged ‘omissions’. Gennari’s main point here is that I assume too high a level of knowledge and don’t give enough background to readers. For example, he suggests I don’t tell readers who Adam Malik was – but he is identified as Indonesia’s foreign minister on p.39, p.46, and p.58. He asks ‘Who was Suharto before he took over Indonesia’s government?’ But on p.44 he is identified: ‘senior right-wing elements in the army leadership headed by General Suharto…’ Gennari continues: ‘There is also no mention of which countries are in ASEAN and when they join. Does Vietnam join?’ Actually p.45 lists the countries involved in founding ASEAN, while p.143 states ‘Vietnam… joined the Association in 1995’. He is right that I don’t provide a general introduction to ASEAN as an organisation, but that’s not the book’s purpose and plenty of other work does this (despite his claim that ASEAN ‘does not receive much research attention’, it is actually the second most written-about regional grouping in the world after the EU). It seems odd to suggest the narrative occurs in a ‘vacuum’ without reference to Sino-Soviet rivalry or the Vietnam war since this is a major aspect of Part I of the book. He suggests there are other ‘surprising points missing’ ; for example, ‘the genocide in Cambodia is not mentioned… Cambodian refugees flooded into Thailand to escape the genocide – certainly this became an ASEAN issue. If not, why not?’. But on p.56 I note: ‘the Thai army engag[ed] in “grisly cooperation” with Pol Pot’s genocidal regime by shooting anyone trying to flee into Thailand’, and chapter 4, entitled ‘Representation, Refugees and Rebels’, devotes three pages to discussing ASEAN’s manipulation of refugees. That Pol Pot’s regime was genocidal is also mentioned on pp. 77, 85, and 88. He goes on: ‘The same deficient also applies to another case study state of East Timor where the Indonesian government was notoriously brutal. It seems strange to have a book this incisive yet never mention the elephant in the room.’ But pp.73-74 describes the ‘disastrous’ impact of the Indonesian invasion, the army’s ‘brutal counterinsurgency campaigns’, which killed c.102,800 people and caused a further 84,200-182,000 to die through hunger and disease, and identifies the occupation as ‘third-world imperialism’.

So, while I’m glad Prof Gennari liked the book, perhaps he could have read it a little more carefully!

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=7770Third Review of ASEAN Bookhttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=720
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=720#respondWed, 19 Dec 2012 18:56:11 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=720My book, ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asia, has been reviewed for a third time, by Prof Timo Kivimaki in the Journal of Peace Research. Here is an excerpt:

Lee Jones’s book is refreshing reading in the otherwise rather commonsensical and atheoretical literature of Southeast Asian security studies. It gives an important contribution to the study of the normative order of that region… [and] a new, plausible way of seeing international relations as transnational class relations… the book is a must read.

Prof Kivimaki does, however, criticise the interpretive, case study method method, saying that “many counter-arguments to the interpretations presented” could be offered. This is true; I say as much in the book and suggest it is up to the reader to decide which interpretation best fits the evidence. I don’t think that using quantitative methods, as Prof Kivimaki suggests, would really seal the deal for anyone determined to disagree! I have also yet to work out a way to make historical sociology – my basic approach – reducible to statistics; I suspect it is impossible. Still, I appreciate this serious engagement with the book, particularly since Timo comes at the region from a Peace Studies background which is very different to my own.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=7200Joern Dosch reviews ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asiahttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=707
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=707#respondTue, 30 Oct 2012 17:18:25 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=707Professor Joern Dosch of Leeds University has written an extraordinarily generous review of my book for the newsletter of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies. Here is an excerpt:

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Lee Jones has written one of the most original, innovative and thought-provoking books on ASEAN of recent years. The term “page-turner” is not usually used to characterise academic works, but this analysis is so clearly and intriguingly written that it is hard to lay the book down. Even the most seasoned ASEAN experts will discover new facets to Southeast Asian regionalism in Jones’ thoroughly stimulating monograph… The book not only makes an important theoretical contribution to the study of Southeast Asian regionalism as it transcends the great divide between social constructivism and neo-realism but, equally important, provides a valuable insight into the way that member states interact with one another… Lee Jones’ book would not be a great one, if it was not controversial in parts.

This is high praise coming from Prof Dosch, whose work on the domestic influences on foreign policy has itself tried to break out of the stale constructivism/realism debate that so stultifies the study of Southeast Asian IR. I quote his unusually honest assessment of the field in my conclusion, when he says that over the last two decades,

despite the impressive volume of analysis, the discourse on Southeast Asian regionalism has not distinctly progressed. This is not surprising in view of the unchanging nature of the analytical object: ASEAN’s lack of institutional evolution, and most member states’ reluctance to touch upon the sensitive issue of national sovereignty, make it difficult for students of ASEAN to add any new and original findings to the debate.

I’m glad that I did not fall foul of this offence!

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=7070Critical Interventions on Statebuildinghttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=659
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=659#respondMon, 27 Jun 2011 07:28:37 +0000http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=659The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding has just published my review of two new titles:

International Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance by David Chandler. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010

Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order by ShaharHameiri. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

]]>http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=6590Jesus Camphttp://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=574
http://www.leejones.tk/blog/wordpress/?p=574#commentsWed, 01 Aug 2007 17:13:00 +0000http://leejones.tk/blog/?p=222Here is a review I wrote of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Jesus Camp. Alex, this one’s for you. Thanks for the heads-up.